A pair of architects and an interior designer worked closely with their Beverly Hill client on this tailor-made renovation.

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"Clients often say that they'll call when they move on to their next house," observes Los Angeles designer Betsy Burnham, "especially after a small job. I'm never waiting," she says knowingly, "but it's nice when it happens."

Several years ago, Burnham decorated what she calls "a west-side bungalow" for a newly divorced dad, a world-traveling investment banker who wanted a nice place to come home to. "One day he called and said, 'I've bought a house in Beverly Hills, and you really have to come and see it,'" she remembers. The vintage house was an unwieldy accumulation of additions and scrambled architectural genres that included a Mediterranean red-tile roof and Elizabethan ye olde latticework windows.

"It was a total mess," declares Trevor Abramson, partner in Abramson/Teiger, the architectural firm enlisted for the renovation. The owner, who wanted openness but not a loft and some aesthetic cohesion both indoors and out, brought the architects and his designer of choice together to work collaboratively right from the beginning.

As agreed, they stripped the house down to basics: The roof was reconfigured, an inviting and navigable floor plan devised and all the doors and windows—encrusted with decades of paint—replaced. In the living room, tall, mullioned windows free the space to fill up with light. "The thinness that you can get with steel window framing is just fantastic," Abramson remarks appreciatively. "It really is the fine stitching on a suit."

The plan and flow of a house has to make sense," remarks Abramson, describing the puzzling structure he and Douglas Teiger first encountered. "We turned a rabbit warren of rooms into highly livable space, introduced light and established a strong relationship with the garden." Abramson credits the homeowner and design team's collaborative efforts for successfully resolving the flow problems. "Brainstorming together was, surprisingly, a fantastic experience," he says.

"We didn't want a great-room type of feel to the house," says Burnham, expressing the team's shared intentions and the client's mandate to open up the house but not turn it into a loft. "Each room has its own focus and character," she continues.

Almost perversely, the "openness" was achieved in part by some artful enclosure: Among the changes was the creation of a hallway between the front entry and the kitchen, which encloses the dining room and makes it smaller. For the homeowner, who favors more casual entertaining around the pool or in the kitchen, the stylish dining room offers an intimate alternative.

In the dining room, a chandelier, finely strung together with hand-hammered chain work, produces a sultry glow. The room's more formal elements—the linen-and-wool draperies and smoke-colored walls, for example—partner beautifully with rough-hewn nature rendered in high style. While the custom chairs were being built, the hands-on homeowner joined Burnham at the factory; he tested each one to make sure the pitch of the backs was just right. "A strong-minded client with strong opinions can help produce a better finished project," says Abramson.

During the renovation process, the kitchen was entirely reconfigured. In the newly drawn up plan, the original kitchen, a narrow galley space, was substantially expanded, incorporating a cluster of three small rooms and annexing part of the formal dining room. "The kitchen really became a focal point of the house," observes Burnham, pointing out its pivotal relationship through to the front entry, adjoining dining room and a glass-enclosed back gallery as well as the newly landscaped back garden with its swimming pool and pool house.

The design team helped create a sense of visual unity by repeating the same materials throughout the house. For the new kitchen floor, Burnham chose the same Spanish marble used for the family room fireplace—in hefty 16-by-24-inch slabs. And the palette is kept intentionally neutral; deep walnut browns and subtle khaki tints predominate. "I generally like to use a lot of color," she allows, "so this house was a challenge."

The kitchen cabinets are mahogany, and a massive custom-built island topped with a polished-concrete counter holds center stage while providing an impressive amount of storage. Nickel-finished pendant lamps and straightforward barstools deliver a pub-meets-breakfast-club kick. "I think it is very bachelor-y," says Burnham, "without being too slick."

The kitchen walls, covered in rectangular black and white ceramic tiles from Ann Sacks, are playful and bold, offering a sharp, well-considered contrast to the room's dominant large-scale pieces and muted tones. "You do need to change scale for visual interest," says Burnham.

The kitchen is linked via the dining room to a gallery that connects it to the family/game room and opens directly onto the patio, as does the kitchen. "We always consider the indoor-outdoor interaction very seriously," recalls Abramson. "When we replaced the windows, we deliberated between using large, expansive glass or horizontal mullions. We chose the mullions—they provide a very thin barrier between you and the exterior without dominating in either direction. They tie the indoors and the outdoors all together in a very crisp, refined way."

Burnham displays a Savile Row flair for fabric: Herringbone tweeds, landed-gentry tattersall checks and worsted wools are handsomely sewn into draperies and upholstery. "I am crazy for menswear," says the designer, who attributes her love of traditional haberdashery to a Connecticut childhood, an Ivy League education and a former career in fashion. In the master suite, floor-to-ceiling draperies hang like haute couture.

The adjoining bath is luxurious and refined: limestone floors, an antique Persian rug and a grand white porcelain tub. Burnham selected a dusky taupe gabardine for the bathroom's draperies. Set against elegant French doors, the long draperies fall gracefully in soft, disciplined lines reminiscent of a beautifully draped suit. Polished-nickel wall sconces and the dark wood console give an old-world quality to the newly constructed bathroom.

"I fell in love with the marble that we used for this bathroom floor," remarks Burnham, admiring the delicate shadings of natural stone (called Linen, from Ann Sacks). Burnham, who prefers to use her select range of materials in a variety of applications, also utilized Linen marble in the entry hall, where larger tiles were laid out in an intricate basket weave; in the dining room the same material makes an appearance in a striking herringbone pattern.

The homeowner is now living very differently than he did in his former bungalow, Burnham observes, reflecting on the extensive remodel. "But he's now put so much of himself into this house. I'm glad that he's living so well."

WHAT THE PROS KNOW
Steel-Frame Windows
Abramson/Teiger Architects decided to replace the existing wooden window and door frames (above). The new, custom-designed frames, elegantly cased in steel, deliver durability and a finely articulated outline. "The architectural advantage of steel is that you get an extremely strong, low-maintenance product," says Abramson. "They are expensive," he continues, "but not necessarily more expensive than high-end wood-frame doors." Most window companies produce custom steel windows; the architects chose Hope's Windows, in Jamestown, New York (hopeswindows.com). Because the windows are extremely heavy, Abramson says, contractors "will typically install them without glass and then install the glass afterward."